The Rock Wall

As I sit down to chat with you, our youngest is enjoying his 28th birthday in the traditional family way – at work on deadline day.

At lunch, I mentioned his actual birth as occurring about 1 a.m. on Tuesday. Kimball corrected me to 1:58 a.m.

– I had a conversation today with Derrill Price III to be sure how old he was when his dad, Derrill Price Jr., was killed. The III was born Dec. 16, 1968, so he was about 5 1⁄2 months young when his dad died in Vietnam.

Kimball and I got to meet for the first time Derrill III, his mother, his son and his two granddaughters at the Vietnam Wall Saturday morning. I didn’t know it but my sister and his mom were friends in high school.

While we were talking to them, Fred Wasoba came up and told us that his wife, Juda, is a cousin of Harry Lee Powers, another Cedar County casualty of the Vietnam War. So I grabbed a photo of her with the standing individual wreath the City of Stockton had provided.

All in all, the ceremony on Saturday was well done, a fitting memorial to the Cedar County fallen and the more than 58,000 others listed on the Wall that Heals. I had no idea when Harry Lee was roaming the halls and football field at EHS and Derrill and I were riding horses and going fishing that I would ever attend such a memorial for them. KL